The UK Data Service provides users with seamless and flexible access to a wide range of data resources to facilitate high quality social and economic research and education. The wide coverage of the service and combination of historically separate data services have led to a diverse technology portfolio with core holdings spread across a range of legacy systems.

The post-holder will be located at the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex, and will have line management responsibilities for existing technical teams.

Duties of the Role

The UK Data Service Associate Director - Technical Services will play a critical role in assessing, managing and implementing the technology that will help the Service meet its goals for stable/ sustainable/ innovative/ user-led data access and use.

The post-holder will be responsible for developing the Service's technology strategy up to the end of the currently confirmed funding period to March 2021, while overseeing stable service delivery, with the possibility of continuing to September 2022 subject to funding being available.

Strategic duties include assessing current infrastructure, development plans and technical resource management and developing a coherent technical and product roadmap that aligns Service's business objectives; developing plans for infrastructure convergence and deprecation, and migration of services to the optimum technical architecture in response to user needs for data access and use; and taking a leading role in the technical developments of CESSDA ERIC (the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives), and representing the UKDS on relevant CESSDA committees/working groups.

Operational duties include leading a team of operations and development staff to determine how the Service will accomplish technical challenges; building cooperative processes that involve both end-users and developers for the development of new tools and services through development projects and maintenance; and providing clear analytics and periodic reporting to support delivery and improvement.

Qualifications and Skills required

Applicants are expected to hold a degree or equivalent level qualification.

Given the importance of the role, it is essential that you possess a track record of success in a relevant senior leadership and management role within a complex organisation, with teams located in different physical locations; an understanding of diverse infrastructure components and operating systems from on-premises to cloud; an understanding of data ingest, data curation and access across the digital object lifecycle; and expertise in computer technology, methodology, and full life-cycle development.

It is also important that you have excellent skills in areas such as interpersonal communications, negotiation and conflict resolution; an ability to engage credibly across all areas of the UK Data Archive and with external stakeholders; and in proactively solving practical and logistical problems, prioritising tasks and meeting tight deadlines.

We anticipate that this role may appeal to a mid/senior level technical lead/manager looking to move into their first senior executive role.

This is fixed-term, full-time post until 31/03/2021 due to funding. The UKDA is registered for ISO 27001 compliance and this post will be subject to the staff vetting process. Further information can be found in the job pack.